


Love Theme; Soonhoon

by kwanies



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: ???? sort of ????, Friends With Benefits, M/M, Oneshot, if you've seen that movie ily, very much days of being wild by wong kar wai vibes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-21
Updated: 2020-12-21
Packaged: 2021-03-11 00:35:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,536
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28226226
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kwanies/pseuds/kwanies
Summary: Jihoon is disillusioned; he spends his days giving his heart out to different people in bits and pieces, waiting for it to run out. Soonyoung knows this. The fact that he doesn't care is what makes things tricky.
Relationships: Kwon Soonyoung | Hoshi/Lee Jihoon | Woozi
Comments: 12
Kudos: 64





	Love Theme; Soonhoon

**Author's Note:**

> it’s been a hot minute since i last wrote anything, so forgive this for being a bit rusty … you can look at this oneshot as a thick wall of fog i’m walking through, trying to find my home (the home which will be, eventually, the fics and other substantial works i want to finish).
> 
> very wishy-washy, very not solid, very much just me trying to crack all the writing bones in my body and get them moving again … if you’ve read a bunch of my fics and noticed how dead i’ve been lately, thank u for ur patience <3 if you have no idea what i’m blabbing about and just want to read some soonhoon then i am fully with you and i hope u enjoy :)

> _“Find what you love and let it kill you. Let it drain from you your all. Let it cling onto your back and weigh you down into eventual nothingness. Let it kill you, and let it devour your remains. For all things will kill you, both slowly and fastly, but it's much better to be killed by a lover.”_

The cigarette between his fingers does little to fill the void in his chest. Jihoon inhales, feels the temporary bliss of something, anything, even if it’s toxic, swirling in his lungs and around his heart, and then feels it dissipate just as suddenly. It does very little, but it does something, and that’s why he continues.

Until Soonyoung shows up and grabs the thing from him. He puts it out and tosses it out the half-open window behind him, looking at him sternly; Jihoon shrugs.

“What?”

“You said you’d stop.”

“I’m lonely.”

“Oh, and smoking is your best friend?” When Jihoon doesn’t answer, Soonyoung sighs and moves to sit down on the bed across from him.

Everywhere around them, there’s mess; burnt out cigarette butts left by Jihoon on the table, crumpled up papers scattered here and there, dust and dirt and unread books and clothes thrown on the floor. Soonyoung lives in a small, ugly apartment, with a horrid green, swirl-patterned wallpaper that’s peeling at every corner and furniture that looks like it came out of his dead grandmother’s house. But, he thinks, it’s almost pretty in a way, despite – or maybe because of – this. Overgrown plants snake down the walls and across the furniture, their leaves tangling with each other like they’re all part of the same flower. Jihoon laughs silently, the corner of his mouth turning up at the thought – the idea that there’s one big flower, one huge, pulsing beam of life and beauty, at the center of this room, taking over everything inside it. It almost suits the boy who lives in it.

“What’s funny?” Soonyoung asks.

“Nothing. Why don’t you ever clean here?”

“No time.”

“That’s rich.”

“Seriously.”

Jihoon laughs, out loud this time, and leans back further in the beat up wicker chair. Soonyoung watches him, pressing his palms deeper into the mattress and tensing the muscles in his arms. Jihoon watches them closely.

Then, suddenly, he shoots forward and out of the chair, tackling Soonyoung so that he’s laying with his back flat against the mattress. Jihoon’s got his knees at either side of the boy’s torso, hands planted at either side of his head, and he looks so far into his eyes, he thinks he might drown in them. He starts to laugh. Soonyoung laughs, too.

“What are you doing?” he grins, looking up into Jihoon’s face.

“Nothing,” Jihoon grins back. He can almost see the glint of his own canine teeth in the dark pool of Soonyoung’s irises. Slowly, he brings his knee to press down on Soonyoung’s stomach, and the boy wheezes.

“Stop it,” he giggles.

“Or?”

“Or this – “

Jihoon feels two hands come up to poke his sides, catching him off-guard and tickling him until he falls. He splays out on top of Soonyoung like a sloth hugging its tree, gasping with short bursts of laughter and begging, “Stop, stop – it tickles, oh my God – “

Soonyoung stops, smiling like he’s won the lottery. Jihoon rolls over so they’re laying side by side.

“You know,” he breathes, calming himself down, “I’d end you if anyone ever saw something like that. I have a reputation.”

“I know,” Soonyoung says, booping his nose. “So scary.”

Now, with no more laughter in them, they just look at each other. Jihoon is torn between kissing Soonyoung and pushing him away, because the way he feels laying so close to him, so warm and soft and weak, enraptures him and scares him all the same. He tries to search the boy’s eyes to see any indication that he’s feeling this too, but he’s too hard to read.

“Don’t you get lonely in this apartment, all by yourself?” he asks, trying to distract himself from his own wandering thoughts.

“No. Why should I? I have my plants.”

Jihoon snorts, shoving Soonyoung lightly. “It’s not the same.”

“I have you.”

“ … “

“Sorry.”

“No, it’s okay.”

 _I have you_ . It’s scary, to think that someone can have you. To be _held_ by someone. Jihoon spends his days loitering around shady corners and picking up girls and boys he finds attractive, smoking so that his lungs wither away slowly and his heart stays lonely in his chest. He’s never fit so snugly in someone’s arms before.

“I think of you a lot,” Soonyoung murmurs. “Everyday, actually.”

Jihoon says, “I’m sorry.”

“I am too.”

The idea of comfort in itself makes Jihoon feel uncomfortable. He finds comfort here, in this tiny box of an apartment; he finds comfort on this dingy mattress and in the dirty mirror above the bathroom sink, the one that he’ll look at sometimes, eyeing his reflection, and see Soonyoung watching him from across the room. There’s comfort in every scrap of paper and candy wrapper left on the floor. There’s even comfort in the sound of traffic pouring in from outside, which is always close and always loud because Soonyoung has no air conditioning and so he keeps his window open for most of the year. Jihoon feels like he could slot into this life here, and that shakes him up badly.

“I’m a basket case,” he whispers. Soonyoung’s fingers come up to brush the hair out of Jihoon’s eyes.

He says, “You’re not.”

“I am.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

It’s dark. The only light turned on is coming from the bathroom, and it’s faint and green in hue and flickers every now and then. But even in the dark, Soonyoung looks like a painting; perfectly messy and tousled, the faint smell of beer and weed coming off of him, which would normally be gross, but right now is the only thing he wants.

“You said you think of me?” he asks. Soonyoung nods, barely perceptible.

“Yes. Very much on purpose.”

Soonyoung looks at Jihoon with tender eyes, with such tenderness that it almost hurts; desire is like a dull knife poking into his side. Through the pain, Jihoon reminds himself that it’s a dream. A dream in real life, walking and waking, but soon to end. A dream Jihoon spends wrapped in silk curtains and silk bed sheets, wrapped in the silk of a spider’s web, a fly waiting to be eaten, while Soonyoung walks through moss and fog and brushes his knuckles with soil-covered hands. Nothing is fully real.

They met at the corner store where Soonyoung works, and that alone shouldn’t be real. Jihoon shouldn’t have tried luring him in the way that he did, with all his cunning and charm, and his sweet, darling eyes that have always worked in getting him what he wants. Jihoon shouldn’t have brought Soonyoung back to his apartment and done what he did. It wasn’t until the morning after that he realized what he’d done.

“I’m sorry,” he says again.

“You should stop saying that.”

“I’m not a good guy, Soonyoung.”

“Somehow, I figured that already.”

“Then why do you keep asking me to come back? Why do something when you know it’s bad for you?”

“Well … why do you smoke? Even though I’ve told you not to, and you know you shouldn’t.”

There’s this image Jihoon has of a peaceful life. A life spilling out of this dirty, precious apartment, shared by two people. He’s never done that before.

“You know, I could drop you any day. I’ve done it before. I’ve done it so many times. I can’t tell you how many people I’ve led on for a couple days, even weeks, and then dumped.”

“Are you proud of yourself for that?”

“No. Fuck.”

Soonyoung goes quiet. His fingers are still close to Jihoon’s face, brushing the spot under his eye and pushing his hair back. Jihoon almost bites his hand on impulse, wanting nothing more than to end this conversation and swallow Soonyoung whole. But he forces himself to stay still.

Every molecule in his body sits still, save for the shallow rise and fall of his chest, when Soonyoung finally answers, “I know you could. I could wake up tomorrow heartbroken. I know what you do … I know that.” He pauses, and Jihoon is about to say something back when he stops, waiting.

Soonyoung continues after a moment, “If I’m honest, it’ll happen eventually. If you don’t break my heart, someone else will. If love doesn’t kill me, something else will, and it could be anything. I can’t control that. But what I can control is – is that, you have your chance, now. I’m giving you your chance to either make me or break me. And whatever you choose, I won’t hate you for it, but I know that no matter what, I’ll be the one who let it happen.”

Slowly, very slowly, Jihoon speaks. The words roll off of his tongue like a snail inches across concrete, heavy and careful. He asks, “Is it worth it?"

“I would rather be hurt by you than anyone else,” is the reply.


End file.
